L'affaire Dominique

Power, money, sex, super ego, ego and the id

Richard Burton, that incredibly handsome British actor, reportedly slept with three different women every week for close to thirty years! That is a tale about power, wealth, fame and sex. Not the attempted rape of a maid in a hotel room! For all the flood of writing about power and sex and amateur Freudianism pervading the global media in the wake of the shocking incident involving the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and a hotel maid he allegedly attempted to rape, the incident says very little about the situation and much more about the man.

This was not the ego of a powerful man captivated by his id, unleashing his charms on a hapless beauty going weak in her knees and seduced by his power. This seems like plain and simple male aggression, if the charges hold in a court of law. Even if the oral sex was consensual, as Mr Strauss-Kahn has claimed, the entire incident reads like the desperate act of a bored and lonely man, not the unleashing of charm by a gentleman of power, wealth and leisure, seducing a winsome lass.

Richard Burton may have been as lonely a man as Mr Strauss-Kahn may have been, he may have been as much of a sex addict, and was certainly more powerful, but there is a mystique about a man who is able to bed so many women without a single rape charge! The real translation of power into sex can only be when it is consensual. When it is coerced or bought it is not one’s power that secures sexual gratification but the fear or greed of the provider. When men use power to coerce, rather than seduce, they employ the oldest weapon known to living beings — violence. Whether it is the power of a king who demands sex, or that of a petty criminal, an exploitative landlord or a scheming boss, in each case there is nothing Freudian about the use of power for sexual gratification. On the other hand, when sex is bought, with money or gifts in kind, it is the pitiful greed of the woman that feeds the ego of the man.

In short, there is nothing macho about having sex that is secured through coercion or compensation. It is only when power is deployed as an aphrodisiac, to paraphrase the great diplomat and strategist Henry Kissinger, that one can explore the relationship between ego and the id. In not deploying the power of his personality, his office and his stature in public life to seduce a woman but by in fact using his physical power to overpower and force a weaker woman to offer sexual gratification, as alleged, Mr Strauss-Kahn was being very ‘un-macho’, very un-French, very crass.

It is this crassness of the alleged incident that makes it all the more repulsive, sad and shocking. There is a sense of adventure that envelopes incidents of illicit sex and the adventurous seek pleasure as sport. Winning over a woman feeds a man's ego as much as it explores his id, even if the super ego cautions him against excessive bravado. How can hurting a woman be explained away in such terms? It is in fact a ‘sub-human’ act. So all the nonsensical theories about power and sex that have been bandied about in the media in explaining Mr Strauss-Kahn’s misadventure are just that. Nonsense.